Keith Hudson's Musings

Is there an ‘understanding’ between the people traffickers and the EU?

Am I right or am I wrong in thinking that there must be an ‘understanding’ between the people traffickers and the EU? The dinghies bringing refugees and migrants to the small Greek islands just off the coast of Turkey are a better class of dinghy and no longer being beached. The steersman — a trafficker – is taking the dinghy away again for another visit. Also, every migrant has a lifejacket. Also, there aeems to be a higher proportion of families with very young children.

When the EU foreign ministers announced a month ago that they were going to more heavily patrol the Mediterranean and arrest the traffickers — then invariably referred to pejoratively — I wrote how stupid this decision was. It would stop the traffickers steering the more expensive type of dinghy with powerful enough engines. They’d use cheaper boats which would be more overloaded as used to be the case early last year, and there’d be many more drownings,

The EU must have realised this. We’ve heard no bad words about the ‘criminal human traffickers’ in the last week or so and none seem to have been arrested. They appear to now to be treated as business people with whom the EU have made some sort of verbal agreement.